


Drive

by lalalalalawhy



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, First Meetings, First Words You Speak to Your Soulmate Appear on Their Skin, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-08 20:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11089422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalalalalawhy/pseuds/lalalalalawhy
Summary: The first day it became legible, Sloane stayed in the bathroom for an hour, reading the upside-down script and running her fingertip over the slight ridges of the letters. It was cool to the touch, like all soulmarks, saving its warmth until she heard her soulmate speak those words.You’re under arrest,her soulmark said, the letters nearly shimmering white against her dark skin.Fuck.





	Drive

**Author's Note:**

  * For [possibilityleft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilityleft/gifts).



Sloane was born a criminal.

That isn’t exactly right. Nobody is born a criminal, not really. Sloane hadn't came directly from the womb, stolen spanner in hand ready to go to work on the best illicit baby Battle Wagon of all time.

But sometimes fate has a way of deciding things.

It wasn't fate that made Sloane good at taking things that didn't belong to her: that was poverty and an empty belly. It wasn't fate that made Sloane a good mechanic: that was an iron will, a garage that could use the extra set of hands, and too much free time. Sloane was still a child when she apprenticed at Goldcliff's third-best mechanic shop and she hadn't yet hit puberty when it became the best, thanks in large part to her natural talent for engineering. She was an early teen when she first shoplifted something that wasn't food: a spare part for the rig she was building herself. (Nobody was really using that piece of sheet metal in the Hammerhead Gang’s empty lot, and certainly nobody would miss it. She thought. She hoped.)

To many a well-to-do Goldcliff citizen, Sloane probably seemed like she had been on the path to criminality since birth, and they would have taken her soulmark as confirmation. When she hit puberty, her soulmark became legible, words written over her heart clear as day.

The first day it became legible, Sloane stayed in the bathroom for an hour, reading the upside-down script and running her fingertip over the slight ridges of the letters. It was cool to the touch, like all soulmarks, saving its warmth until she heard her soulmate speak those words.

 _You’re under arrest,_ her soulmark said, the letters nearly shimmering white against her dark skin.

 _Fuck_ , she thought.

* * *

There had been an official forum once regarding the nature of soulmarks and their relation to Fate, Choice, and Love. It took place, funnily enough, the day after Sloane was born, at the University of Goldcliff. It sought to answer some simple questions: If a person’s first words spoken to their soulmate appeared on their body at puberty, was that evidence for or against a deterministic worldview? Was there evidence of a soulmark changing with time or effort? What did the warmth really mean?

Moderated by the University President and overseen by the Goldcliff Militia (lest anything get too out of hand), the discussion brought together the best and brightest minds of Goldcliff: the chief priestess of the Goddess Istus, Goddess of Fate went toe-to-toe with the high priest of the Temple of Oghma, Goddess of Knowledge. Several well-known philosophers, a dermatologist, an archaeo-anthropologist specializing in the Soulmarks of those long-dead, and a university professor who had built their career on the study of soulbound marriages.

It was Goldcliff’s most widely attended event of the decade, so long as you didn’t count the unofficial attendance numbers of any of the Battle Wagon Races. (Officially, nobody went to the Battle Wagon Races. Unofficially, everybody went to the Battle Wagon Races. Obviously. This was Goldcliff, after all.) Originally planned for the university ampitheater, it had to be moved outside to the center of town, just outside the doors of the Goldcliff Trust. The forum spanned several days (which annoyed the bankers not in attendance), and included presentations and a moderated debate.

After all was said and done, the injuries were limited to a few minor lacerations, a broken collarbone (accidental), a sprained elbow (intentional), and several bruised egos (metaphorical).

If, in the next Battle Wagon Race, a team whose leader sort of resembled the chief priestess of the Goddess Istus wearing a sheep mask made of knitted wool was racing particularly violently against a team whose leader looked a little like the high priest of the Temple of Oghma wearing a mask that resembled a worm made out of blank scrolls, well. Nobody commented.

Nobody ever commented on Battle Wagon Races. Not officially.

The conclusions of the forum was, as was to be expected, largely a wash. The acolytes of Istus remained steadfast in their view that soulmarks were a declaration of their Goddess's hand upon the world, while acolytes of Oghma believed the soulmarks were but an indication that writing, be it in books or on the skin, indeed held truth, but must always be questioned. The dermatologist was ultimately unhelpful ("This isn't exactly a skin disease, you know that, right?" was her only recored statement), and the sociologists just found the entire discussion  _fascinating,_ which just served to frustrate everyone.

In Sloane’s case, after the initial shock, it didn’t really matter. She knew she loved Battle Wagon Racing from the first time she got behind the wheel of a vehicle. Was it fate the feeling of the wind in her hair and squinting into the sun from behind her favorite pair of sunglasses as it set against a desert sky? Was it fate that she was good at it, better than most, and improving all the time? Even if she could choose to give it up, she absolutely wouldn't. What did it matter what Fate's plans were?

She wasn't reckless, on the track or off, but she knew better than most that she’d get caught some day. Someday, all her chickens would eventually come home to roost.

She at least hoped the cop was hot.

* * *

Hurley hated her soulmark from the first day she got it. She hated the way freckles on her chest had rearranged to inscribe it on her skin. She hated how it was cool to the touch, and she resented that it would warm only when she “found” her “soulmate” and they “spoke” those words to her. 

She squinted at it, reading it backwards in the mirror, over her left breast, over and over again. She scrubbed at it, hard, but it was no use. It was there to stay.

Most of all, she hated the sensation of a loss of control over her own self.

Her parents, neither of whom was technically the other's soulmate, had told her not to sweat it. Soulmates happened, but it wasn't the end of the story, they told her. After all, they hadn't found each other until they met in the grief counseling group for surviving partners of soulmates. 

“We were the only people there under 50,” her mother remembered, laughing drily. Hurley's father gave her a small smile. 

“Hurls, lots of things feel like the end of the world at your age,” he said. “We're proof that it doesn't have to be that way.”

It would have been a lot more reassuring if she didn't see her dad later that evening gazing off into the middle distance, idling running his fingers over his cool-to-the-touch soulmark.

Her brother had assured her that all soulmarks were dumb. After all, his just said “Huh?” in big block letters that looked almost like a tattoo.

It didn’t matter. Hurley wanted it gone.

She snuck in to see a physician, the dermatoligist, the best one in town, just as she was closing up shop for the night. Hurley knew the doctor had been involved in that Forum, and there were rumors she could help you rid yourself of a soulmark if you didn’t want one.

At first the physician startled to see the halfling teenager standing there, blinking back traitorous tears.

Hurley pulled back the collar of her shirt, turning red as a beet, as though it were something shameful on her skin instead of a perfectly normal soulmark. She gestured at it, silent, trusting her desperation to read on her face. It did.

The physician nearly rolled her eyes, but thought better of it. This wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.

“I’m sorry,” she said, hiding a small smile. “I can’t help you.”

“Can’t?” Hurley bit out, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. “Or won’t?”

She didn’t stick around to hear the response.

If she couldn't control the words on her skin, Hurley thought, she would concentrate on what she could control. She became a monk, studying the Way of the Hand after school to gain complete control over her body and spirit. She joined the Goldcliff Militia as soon as she graduated, rising through the ranks fast enough to be granted her own squad wagon to patrol the outskirts of town.

And she was always, always the one in the driver’s seat. Her colleagues teased her, but she held firm. If she wasn't driving, she was walking. This held true even when she was working with a partner, which wasn’t often: Hurley was known for her dedication and her hard work, but she tended to bristle when other people were in her space.

Besides, she liked driving.

* * *

The official Militia policy on the Battle Wagon Racers was the following: There was no official policy concerning the Battle Wagon Racers, so long as they were technically kept any and all activity on the outskirts of town, outside official city limits.

As the center of the wagon racing industry, Goldcliff was also home to the unsavory elements wagon racing brought with it. A healthy grey market for refurbished engine parts, semi-legal wagon components, and weaponry operated in most corners of the town, and the Militia kept an eye on it. The bars in Little West End of Huntington stayed open all night on race weeks, which was a recipe for disaster, but wasn't technically illegal. And although the racing gangs were mostly made up of misfits inextricably bound together into found families, they did not always get along.

Hurley had been trying to track down a shipment of illegal and dangerously unregulated magical wagon components for a week that she knew was due for arrival before the next wagon race for a month. When she got a tip from one of her contacts a week before the race, she took it to the captain for permission to intervene. The shipment would be coming in that night, just before sunset, and it was full of parts imbued with a nasty curse that could kill everyone on the track if exploited.

Captain Bain granted Hurley permission to arrest everyone at the site and ask questions when they got back to holding. They’d sort out who knew about the exploit, and whether the parts were malicious or not, later.

As she got to the scene, a modified wagon was pulling up to the building. Hurley jogged over to it and tapped on the window, signaling that the woman within should roll down her window.

“You’re under arrest,” she said, quieting her breaths.

The woman driving the car raised her eyebrows and lowered her mirrored sunglasses down the bridge of her nose in one smooth motion. She gazed up at Hurley, her piercing dark eyes squinting a little. She looked Hurley up and down, her eyebrows lowering slightly. When she looked Hurley in the face, she was visibly relaxed, and her mouth quirked in a smirk that was exactly halfway to a genuine smile.

Hurley’s breath caught. It didn’t help that she was struggling to get her panting breaths under control, but it wasn’t just that. The driver was _beautiful_ , the kind of beautiful people wrote songs about. 

It was then that Hurley noticed the driver had placed her hand over her heart. She noted that, ready to write it down when she made the report to Captain Bain. 

The woman’s ears and height, visible even though she was seated, meant she was at least part elf, and the smudge on her cheek and dirt on her hands and meant that she worked for a living. She was wearing a black tank top and a stained light brown coverall unzipped to the waist. Her dark skin nearly glowed in the golden light of the evening, and her dark hair, long and straight, moved with the evening breeze.

If Hurley’s heart was beating a little too fast, if she felt something like liquid sunshine spreading over her skin and throughout her bloodstream from immediately above her heart to the rest of her body, down to her fingers and toes, well. She’d just been running. She was overheated.

“Get in,” Sloane said. “I’m driving.”

Hurley had been dreading hearing those words for more than a decade, but when the moment came, she didn't even hesitate.

* * *

Hurley and Sloane had driven nearly half a mile into the desert, wind whipping their hair above their heads and each wearing a goofy grin as they stared at each other, before Hurley realized that she liked this was enjoying this. She was in the passenger’s seat for the first time in years and loved it. She wasn't in control of where they were going, hell, she was probably fired, but she didn't care. She had met her soulmate, and she hadn't even thought twice about it.

It was amazing, Hurley would think later that night, as she lay drifting off in Sloane’s arms, that she had spent so much time dreading her soulmark. She had been so worried she would turn into a person who was commanded by their soulmate the first time they met them. And she had spent so much energy dreading her soulmate, too. After all, what kind of soulmate would command her? And would she acquiesce? Would she give up that control?

In the end, all hours she’d spent worrying about it boiled down to a split-second decision. When a woman so beautiful she’s nearly glowing looks at you with that kind of a face and tells you to get in, Hurley had no choice.

It turned out she didn't really want one. 

The next morning, the two of them sat, smiling at each other over mugs of coffee. Sloane made hot, strong, good coffee, just the way Hurley liked it. Hurley took a sip, then asked Sloane the question she'd been avoiding since they had gotten back to her apartment the night before. She had paused kissing Sloane long enough to peel off her shirt, revealing her soulmark inscribed above her left breast. Hurley hadn't said anything about it then, just kissed it, smiling a little as it flared with heat under her lips.

“Can I ask a question?” Hurley asked.

Sloane nodded.

“What did you think of your soulmark?” she asked. It was a reasonable question: she couldn't imagine too many people ended up with “You're under arrest” as the first words their soulmate said to them. It couldn’t have been easy to be a criminal with an arrest record literally etched into her skin.

Sloane laughed, easily, like the water falling over Goldcliff Falls, and Hurley's heart felt like it would burst out of her chest, scattering her soulmark's freckles to the floor.

“I just hoped my arresting officer would be hot,” she said. 

Hurley blinked at her for a second, taking a sip of coffee. She had been so worried about a soulmark that, in retrospect, seemed much less drastic.

“And?” she finally asked. “When you saw it was me?”

Sloane grinned at her. “Yeah,” she said, approvingly. “I got the hottest soulmate cop girlfriend in the world.”

Hurley let out an embarrassed snicker, which made Sloane laugh.

“It's true, though!” Sloane insisted. “When I saw you there, with the sun shining behind you and lighting up your curls, it was like you were a miracle. My miracle.”

Hurley blushed a bright red, which made Sloane laugh again. Of course, that made Hurley start laughing as well, and it was a few seconds before either of them composed themselves enough to take another sip of coffee.

Sloane put her hand out on the table, and Hurley grabbed it immediately.

Easiest decision she ever made.


End file.
